


rise like a break (dawn comes bloody)

by piggy09



Series: the unforsaken road [3]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Helena warnings, Mentions of non-con, Spoilers through S2E4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 10:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1601816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah can help Sarah can help Sarah can help Helena <i>knows</i> Sarah can fix this, fix what they did to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rise like a break (dawn comes bloody)

**Author's Note:**

> Operation "Natalie writes Helena's POV for every episode Helena has dialogue in in Season 2" continues!  
> ...That needs a better codename.

Helena wakes like a pit, gaping dark hungry. Her skin prickles. There is a hunger in her – hunger is not unfamiliar but this, this is a deep and unknowable thing. This is being dunked in the bath over and over as a child, that absence of air, each breath replaced by water.

This is _drowning_.

Helena would say this is smothering but it is not. She would say it is strangling but it is not that either. These are things that happen, yes, but they do not touch the deep-down hurting of her.

She is not filled, she is not satiated; there was a heartbeat in her, in the mirror-heart of her that said _find Sarah get Sarah find Sarah get Sarah_ and now it is saying something else instead, some low confused murmur of grief.

Something has happened to Sarah. Sarah has been hurt.

Helena leaves Grace’s body on the ground (not dead not dead Helena does not kill human beings) (except her mother who deserved to die who deserved to die who deserved so much worse than death her mother who _broke_ her). Each step is another drumbeat, and Helena is _certain_ that something has happened to Sarah, because what else could make her body hurt like that except that connection?

Helena has been hurt plenty of times, but not like this. Never like this.

She moves through these great white rooms unseeingly, frustration scratching at the bottom of her throat when she cannot get through the door—

Sounds. Like prey, she hides. Like a predator, she waits.

Two sets of footsteps walk by where she has tucked herself away, safe in the dark in the way only light could be (if she is light at all). Their voices are smug – lots of voices are, when they do not realize Helena is around. They said Tomas was gone but they stink of him, his _smile_ when he thought she would not shoot him, the way he was not afraid.

Helena is afraid. She does not like this. Her thoughts are scattered and jumpy and there is something in her that _screams_ at these men, bares its teeth, even though they said they were helping her. Even though they said family.

Helena _has_. Family. She has one, and the smiles of these men make her afraid and that is not something she enjoys at all.

She can tell they’re gone by sounds, yes, and the feeling of the air against her skin, but also the way her heart settles from its quick-thumping into that increasingly familiar beat of loss. Safe to move.

So she uncurls and moves through the door into – into –

her

skin

p

r

i

c

k

l

e

s

and Helena

                   remembers.

She was wrong. This is worse than drowning.

In drowning water floods you, yes, but it gives itself to you. It does not

                                                                                                               take.

Water does not reach into you cold metal tear you apart gloves on hands Helena _remembers_ and what she remembers rips her open, and over, where she stands frozen in this room all draped in plastic.

She was wrong. Sarah is not hurting.

It is Helena, who is hurting. It is Helena who is hollow, who has been hurt, who has been hurt and who is hollow and who is _missing_ something and it isn’t Sarah but all she needs now is Sarah. She needs Sarah. She needs Sarah to help her understand because like a pit she is gaping and unlike a pit she is

 

afraid.

She is so afraid, so afraid, alone and afraid and – Sarah. She needs to get to Sarah and that means she needs to get out.

She fumbles for anger like fumbling for her own hand in the dark and, like that hand, she grasps it. Like the metal bar on the table she grasps it. Fear turns to anger, easy and smooth, and now Helena is _snarling_ angry. She wants to rip these men apart and pull from them what they have pulled for her.

Sarah, though. Helena’s heart says Sarah is fine but still she needs to find her and listen to Sarah’s heart tell her the truth. Helena trusts Sarah and Sarah’s heart more than she trusts her own, maybe. Maybe.

So she cuts through the plastic instead, snarling, and runs. It is ungainly; this dress trips her up but the idea of discarding it makes bile roll in Helena’s throat. To discard it would be to look at her body and look at what they have done to her – to cut the dress would be to lose time, leave a trail, make Helena look at her body, make Helena _look_ at her _body_ which maybe isn’t hers, maybe isn’t hers at all ever maybe not hers.

(To cut the dress would make it the dress she wore at Maggie’s apartment. Helena is not ready for that memory; to let herself dwell on the warmth of Sarah’s skin under her hand would make her weep.

To think about herself then would make her curl up and weep, and hit herself, and weep. Helena doesn’t have time for that. Sarah. Sarah.)

She pours her anger into running, instead. The skirt drags around her ankles, which makes sense: it is made by these people. It wants her to stay.

Snow dusts her hair with white. All over she is white, which means she can be found. White says she is unused: a bandage is white before it has reached its purpose. A dress is white before it is covered in blood.

Helena has a purpose. This isn’t right it isn’t _right_ Helena is so _afraid_ and she hates it, hates this. Her breath knocks against her throat. She runs.

There is a man, like a signpost standing in her way. He is almost marking the way out, this man, standing stone-still. He watches but does not move. He does not want to stop her, then, which is good; Helena does not really want to kill him. Her chest rolls with loss.

_Hey,_ he says, and then yells. _Hey. Hey!_

Helena’s mind fastrattles to voices on telephones, voices banging on doors, but she cannot spare the surprise to wonder what Detective Childs’ partner is doing here or think about the way Sarah’s voice had broken when she had said: _Go_.

The feeling of her hands shoving Helena out the fire escape—

No. No time. Run, Helena.

_Good riddance, Arthur Bell_ , she thinks as she runs. She wonders if that dooms them to meeting again; she has not had a lot of luck with “goods” and “riddances.”

She plunges into the woods like an embrace, like she is Sarah and the woods could swallow her as easily and gladly as she could swallow Sarah, if given the chance.

Her breath lurches in her chest and she finally, finally lets herself think about Sarah.

She thinks about Sarah, and she thinks about Kira, and she wonders where Sarah would have gone. Helena would go to Sarah. Sarah would go to Kira. Skip a step: where would Kira be?

Car-crash bang in Helena’s mind. She moves her feet backwards, all the way back to – yes. 1-4-8 Scots-burn A-ve-nue.

Helena can find her way there – can find her way almost anywhere, if she needs to. The only question is getting _away_. Running is her only option now.

Anger fuels her for a while, and then fear, and then her body finds itself and she moves like a machine, thoughtlessly. Every now and then she probes at her connection to see if Sarah is alright – she cannot help feeling that Sarah is not alright. Something in her sings that Sarah needs her. That fuels her too, forwards, forwards.

She runs. Then she walks. She is pulled by something in her chest that says _home_.

(Which isn’t right, is it? Sarah _has_. Family. Helena stabbed her mother. Her niece walked into the street and then was gone. Her sister is a gunshot wound.

What does Helena have? Nothing. She is heading to a place she is not welcome.

She just – needs Sarah – to understand –)

Fields change to roads, roads to houses, houses to cities, and Helena moves through the streets like a razor blade over skin. Easily. Maybe quicker – here she does not want to think about her sins. Here she wants Sarah on her skin, not blood.

Sarah can help Sarah can help Sarah can help Helena _knows_ Sarah can fix this, fix what they did to her.

Streets turn familiar; she has taken a long way to not walk by – where – she – does not go, would not ever go. She has taken a long way so she would not go. She has taken a long way, but it is a true way, and the house looms in front of her.

She’s almost afraid to enter it, 148scotsburnavenue. The last time she entered she broke everything so horribly.

She allows herself one breath of hesitation. Then she enters.

The door opens easily enough, but the air is stale on Helena’s tongue. Everything is ravaged, broken as Helena feels, and she stumbles despite herself upon her first step in.

No. No. _No,_ she thinks, angry, because her feet ache in these boots that do not belong to her and something in her is screaming empty and it makes a certain kind of sense, that Sarah is not here. Helena does not deserve it.

Sarah is alright. Sarah is not hurt. She knows this, truer than true. And Helena went to Sarah. Sarah will come to Kira. Kira would be here. Should be here. (Isn’t here.)

Helena’s mother should be here, too; she is not. Helena will not think about why she is not.

She can wait. She will wait. Sarah. For Sarah, she can wait.

So she finds a small place, a hidden place, and curls up in it. Under the stairs she curls up and does not sleep.

She does not want to dream.

She thinks vague warm drowsy thoughts about Sarah touching her deliberately, hands on Helena’s arms, chin tucked against the curve of Helena’s head. These things soothe more than the unfamiliar smell of the clothing around Helena, more than the feeling of an unfamiliar space all small and (cage) confining. They are warm enough to help her forget the cold and the way it was _inside_ of her.

These things help her stay alive until the door creeeeaks open. Helena’s eyes snap open; she leans forward, instinctively. Her heart throws itself against her ribs over and over _Sarah_. Sarah’s tentative footsteps, tender on the creaking floorboards. Helena cannot describe how they are tender but she _knows_.

She can’t bring herself to move, can’t quite make it real. Sarah is alive.

Sarah

            shot

                        her.

(Sarah is alive.)

She’s caught in this swell of _doubt_ , bitter metallic and wrong, and so somehow misses her chance. A voice squawks, Sarah screams in fear – a beautiful gunshot noise that makes Helena want to tear someone apart but before she can there is a _Fee-_ sound and then Sarah’s voice blossoms with casual frustration, a sound from Sarah that Helena has never heard.

She wants to eat it. It is something new about Sarah that Helena does not _know_. Her eyes are wide in the dark, her breathing quiet as she listens to the two of them squabble. Like children. Like—

_family_.

Sarah. has.

Ah.

They talk in a low murmur about things Helena does not care about; she is too busy listening to Sarah’s voice, picking it apart like chicken flesh between her fingers, worrying out the faults in it.

She doesn’t sound very sad, for someone who tried to kill her _family_.

(Helena remembers the way Sarah had cried when Helena had killed their mother and her breath rattles in her throat. How could Sarah love her more – oh, but Sarah had said _someone I’ve been dreaming about my entire life_.

Even Helena had only dreamed of Sarah once.

Yes. That’s why. Sarah just doesn’t know her very well. That’s all. Sarah is moving forward and she cares, she does, she _does_ , she can help Helena. This is truth. She’s seen it.)

Helena files the name _Rachel_ away in her mind, for the future. Sarah doesn’t seem to like her very much, and that means Helena doesn’t like her very much either.

Sarah speaks of war. That makes something ignite in Helena’s chest, warm, because Sarah is a fighter too. They may know different kinds of battle but they are both the same sort of weapon. Sarah says _war_ , and _Rachel_ , and now Helena _knows_ this name is important.

Sarah says _war,_ and _Rachel_ , and _apartment_. Fee-voice is not allowed along.

_Now_ , Helena thinks. If there was ever a time it was _now_.

Sarah closes the door.

Helena opens the door.

_Cam-eron Arms_ , she thinks. _Ex-ec-u-tive Suites_.

It’s a little bit similar to Katja Obinger, isn’t it? Except. Except this time there is no one telling her what to do or where to go. Except this time she is not there to kill. Except this time she understands things: love. pain. The way pain and love mix together in Helena’s chest. She understands a lot more, but the task itself is the same.

Find the room. Enter it. Move from there.

So she waits a few shuddering loss-beats to move and then goes. Her mind is blurry – she does not know exactly what she’ll do when she gets to the apartment, only that she is being _pulled_ and, even though she has a choice, she does not really have a choice.

She is pulled, yes, but it is still difficult finding this building – all of the buildings lean overhead like the men standing over Helena’s bed and it makes her dizzy, the way the buildings stare, the way the people around her stare.

Helena misses her jacket with a dull and sudden ache. She misses pants. More than anything she misses Sarah’s jacket, the giddy smell of that leather.

(Sarah kept Helena’s jacket. But the jacket isn’t important anymore; what’s important is Sarah, Sarah Sarah Sarah.)

She has nothing except this dress, these boots, this slice of metal in her hand. The latter will have to be discarded, if she is going to get into this Cameron Arms; she ducks into an alley and slides it in between trashbags. It is easier than hiding a body, in this respect.

This eats up time hungrily, like Helena eats, and her heart is pounding sicker and sicker as she moves. Her hands are starting to shake. It is urgent that she get to Ra-chel’s apartment, that she find Sarah. This is possibly the most important thing.

The sight of the building is like a wind in Helena’s chest. It is a good thing. She is pleased with herself; she wants to tell someone, _see, I have done this, and I am good_.

There is no one to tell. She ducks her head down, does not make eye contact, wishes desperately for her jacket – there is nothing better for hiding from cameras than a hood, Helena knows – and plunges into the mouth of it, this building.

She plunges into a series of mouths, each smaller than the last – door lobby elevator hallway hallway hallway hallway, a long series of hallways that make Helena gasp again, drown again, drown. Again. They are too similar to the place-she-has-left; they make her dizzy.

Still she finds the room. Dizziness has never stopped her before. Nothing has stopped her before, except Sarah.

The door certainly doesn’t stop her, but it is a tricky lying thing and it takes Helena longer than she’d like. She still does not like this _Rachel_ , and she does not like this door that is keeping her from Sarah. She does not like being con-spic-u-ous in front of the door, especially when everything in her is screaming _Sarah_.

But she solves the door. _Nothing_ can stop her, besides Sarah.

Helena opens the door.

It is dark, and reeks of emptiness. Her heart falls through her chest like a stone. How could she – how did she _miss_ –

Her fingers trail along the counter, the knife block, a machine for making music. It is a nice apartment. Helena hates it. She hates it for not containing Sarah. There is nothing she would not hate, for not containing Sarah.

Then there is a

                        _scream_

                                       and that is Sarah and someone is here and hurting Sarah and Sarah, Sarah is here and she is hurt and a cold clarity settles over Helena like a second skin. It is looking down a sniper scope, when everything is settled into tiny inevitable points.

She turns on the music. She reaches for the knife block. She can hear low animal sounds from Sarah – _Sarah_ – but she cannot think about those now; only killing, only hurting whoever would hurt Sarah, only herself and the knife and the knife that is herself.

Helena hears the cock of a gun, but that’s alright. She knows how to handle guns. She is not afraid. She fears no evil. She crouches. She waits.

He is not expecting her.

He struggles – again, this is alright. She would expect no less. In her veins is the purest joy: she is fighting for _Sarah_ , she is removing evil from this earth, amen. Amen amen amen; she shoves the knife into his neck.

She is baptized in his blood. Her eyelids flutter closed. Her dress is stained with blood; it has reached its purpose. She has reached her purpose. Amen amen amen amen amen.

No, he is not expecting her.

No one expects to die.

(Helena didn’t.)

He chokes, stumbles, crashes to the floor. First the lamp fell; Helena is the only light standing, now. First the light fell, now the darkness follows: the man smothers the light when he falls. But Helena smothered him first, so she forgives him. His blood is drying on her skin. It cools and she feels that loss stir to life again, sobbing, empty, hollow.

He crashes to the floor. Amen.

Helena spits on his body because he had the – the – Helena cannot even think of a word, a word for how stupid and cruel and cowardly and disgusting and inhuman it is, to hurt Sarah. He hurt Sarah. He deserves a much slower death, but he hurt

Sarah whimpers screams shudders from the other room and Helena looks up, slow – Sarah. Sarah is alive. Sarah. is alive. Sarah is alive Sarah is alive, tied up in the shower, she is alive blood trickles down her neck and Helena wants to revive this man and kill him again Sarah’s _blood_ should not be spilled, Helena has not spilled Sarah’s blood and it should remain beneath her skin holy Sarah is alive Sarah is letting hysterical sounds bubble from her throat Sarah is _afraid_.

Love for Sarah blooms in Helena’s chest like a sunrise. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. She wants to look at her forever, Helena’s sister close enough to touch. Helena wonders what she smells like. Helena wonders if she smells like fear.

She has walked a long time but these steps are the hardest; already everything in her is pulling her to lie down on the ground, curled up around Sarah’s legs, and sleep. She is so tired. She is aching and empty.

Sarah won’t stop making those _sounds_ , though, so raw they hurt Helena to hear them. She doesn’t understand. She wishes Sarah would explain why she is making these sounds, her face rippling, her eyes wide and white as prey’s eyes are – Helena _said_ she would not kill her. She wouldn’t ever. Not ever.

And yet! Sarah is _screaming_ and it hurts, it hurts Sarah should not be screaming when Helena _saved_ her. Sarah needed her, like Helena knew she would, and Helena needs Sarah now and it’s _alright_ , Sarah should not be crying.

It hurts Helena like a bullet, to see Sarah crying.

She hushes her like she thinks you are supposed to hush a child, _ssshsshsshssshsshssshssshssh_. It is a different sort of hushing than the sounds she crooned to Grace. This is love, spilling from between her lips. She loves Sarah, loves her loves her loves her.

She slides forward, feet heavy against the ground, but cannot quite bring herself close enough to touch. Instead she lingers in front of the shower, fingers splayed on the glass; like this it almost looks like Sarah is cradled in her hand, small enough that no one can hurt her ever again. Ever again no one can hurt her. Amen.

_Sssh_ , Helena says, and Sarah just _looks_ at her. Her eyes are so large and she shakes in constant, full-body movements.

But she does hush, and Helena leans her head against the glass wall of the shower because she is so tired, so tired, and Sarah is so afraid.

But she does hush, and Helena says:

“Hello, sestra. Good to see you.”

What she means is:

I love you.

I missed you.

I love you.

I need you.

I love you.

But she doesn’t think Sarah would take that well right now, and so she does not say it. She is calm. She is gentle. She _loves_ Sarah. There is no need for Sarah to be crying.

And yet she does not stop – words fall from her mouth like the chunks of blood in Helena’s hair, smeared and painful and raw, raw as flesh.

“Helena, what are you doing here,” she howls, none of that casual love. Her love is harder to find. Helena can find it. Helena knows that Sarah loves her, beneath that tortured scream from her throat.

Helena knows torture. This is what it sounds like.

(Sarah sounds like Helena in a cage. Why does she sound like Helena in a cage? It’s just Helena. Helena was cruel but she would not leave that cut behind Sarah’s ear she can see bleeding, she would not leave Sarah dangling in a shower like any old body. Sarah is important and special and – and – Helena cannot make her _see_ it.)

But Sarah has asked her a question! Even like this, a dizzy tangle of love and hurt and hurt and emptiness and love, Sarah’s questions are important.

This one is easy to answer, anyways. She never considers _not_ telling Sarah the truth: that she followed her, dogged Sarah’s footsteps, easy as loving.

In her head Sarah is Sarah and Helena’s mother has no name, but when she speaks she says _sestra_ and _mother_ because words have power. By naming Sarah “sister” she is forging their connection even stronger. The same holds true by telling Sarah they have the same mother, that they came from the same womb, that they are night and day and without the other they are _nothing_ , nothing.

Nothing.

Sarah flinches at _sestra_ , flinches at _mother_ , says in one long rush of bile “I shot you, you were dead,” her eyes trained on Helena like a searchlight. She does not look away from Helena and surely there is something to praise in that, isn’t there? She does not look away from Helena at all, even as she shakes and cries and says things like _You were dead_ , over and over.

But Helena forgave Sarah for that – in a way she forgave Sarah as soon as she woke up, but now that forgiveness is cemented in her chest, filling the space where the bullet was. How could she not forgive Sarah, when Sarah hangs here helpless and speaks only of her own guilt? How could she do anything but love Sarah, such a fragile, shameful thing?

If this is all that makes Sarah cry, well – it is simple to fix that, isn’t it? Helena feels no blame. Helena only feels love, so strong in her chest it sings.

She can’t quite express it, that love, in mundane terms. The word “love” is not enough for it.

So she shakes her head and says: “Yes you did.” The no and the yes, these contradictions, this night-and-day. _Yes you did, no I am not_.

“It’s a miracle,” she breathes, blood burning with righteousness, because how could this love be anything less? How can she show Sarah what this means, unless she speaks of miracles, acts of God?

“We were meant to be together,” she says, holy. She cannot look Sarah in the eyes, now; to do so feels like blasphemy. Instead she looks at the knife, because she is the knife and the knife is her. Helena has always been a blade.

Sarah

says

_Stay away from me_.

Oh. No. No, that’s not right, that’s not _fair_ , Helena has dragged her skirts and her empty belly all the way to Sarah, she is covered in blood because of Sarah, inside and outside she is hurting because of Sarah, and Sarah says _leave_. How could she tell Helena to go? How could she – how could she do that?

Helena looks at Sarah again, her fingers sliding all over the glass wall with the urge to touch, hold, make Sarah understand through her skin what Helena cannot express with her clumsy tongue, her clumsy words.

If she touches Sarah now – Sarah might – not. Understand. Helena won’t. She will try words because everything in her needs Sarah to help. Everything in her needs.

“ _Please_ ,” she says, hurting. The world tastes like blood. “Sestra. I need your help.”

( _sestraminemysestraminesarahminesarahpleasehelpsarahsestramine_

Does Sarah understand what she means, when she says _sestra_? There are so many things it is important for Sarah to understand.)

“Don’t send me back,” she begs. Sarah looks at her; she is still crying, but she does look at Helena. Her eyes flick all over Helena’s body, to – the ring – on Helena’s hand.

“I was _married_ ,” she tells Sarah, a little bit like confession, a little bit like a sob, because Sarah has to understand, yes? Sarah has to know. Sarah has to know what to do, with Helena-who-was-married.

Sarah looks at her and shakes and sobs. The two of them they are the same; they are both falling apart. Sarah is silent, though, and so Helena has to speak for the both of them.

It is difficult. This is difficult and it rips Helena apart like a blade, this talking. She wishes Sarah would talk, that Sarah would know the right words to say. They must be in there, curled up and sleeping. If Helena could just _wake_ them! Her own words will have to lure them out.

“I think…” Helena tries, stumbles, continues, “he took something…from inside of me.”

Sarah looks at Helena, and looks at Helena’s body, and looks at Helena again; Helena isn’t sure when she started moving forward, exactly, only that she can smell Sarah, sweat and fear and the metal tang of blood, and that her body is crying out in its emptiness and that she has finally, finally bridged the gap.

She rests her head against Sarah’s chest, and listens to the thumping of her heart, pounding the same rhythm as Helena’s heart with just a few miraculous inches of change. Left and right. Night and day. Sarah and Helena.

Helena listens to the pounding of Sarah’s heart. It sounds like coming home.

(Sarah’s heart is more worthy of trust than Helena’s. There is no uncertainty in this thought.)

She lets her body drape against Sarah’s, listens to the ripple of Sarah’s fear, feels the way it bends Sarah’s ribs in, out, in again, each movement the sweetest thing Helena has ever known.

The knife is heavy in Helena’s hand – she should cut Sarah down, she knows she should cut Sarah down, but she is so afraid that Sarah would not hug her back that she cannot breathe through it.

As it is now: Sarah had told her to stay away, but now Sarah’s body is unmoving against Helena’s own. She does not make a sound until Helena’s arms wrap around her, until Helena finally makes them one again.

One again. It seems like Helena’s whole life has been being ripped from Sarah and being pulled back to her, over and over again, the way day is always swallowed by night and the way it always, always returns. This is right. This is good. How could she have not known that she and Sarah were one, once, when embracing her is so _good?_ It is the truest thing Helena has ever known.

She breathes. Her breathing evens out with Sarah’s own, until Sarah begins to sob, high whining noises of distress.

Crying is strange and Helena does not know what is making Sarah cry; she is too full to think about the reasons Sarah might be crying, to think about Sarah. She has spent so much time thinking about Sarah that it swells in an ache in her, something that needs to be released. Instead she buries her head further into Sarah’s chest, breathes in the unwashed _Sarah_ smell of her, and lets the pieces of herself slide back into place.

She can build herself new around this hole in her; she knows it, knows that she can, as long as she can hold onto this memory of Sarah shaking surrounded by all of Helena. All of Helena is engulfing Sarah. Maybe Sarah does not want Helena’s protection, but Helena will give it gladly, over and over and over, as long as she is able to. This is the promise she is making with this embrace.

There are a lot of promises she is making with this embrace, and she doesn’t know how many of them Sarah understands. She is never able to understand Sarah, and that in itself is another sort of miracle. Both of them are the stuff of miracles; Helena knows this to be true.

Sarah sobs in small little pieces, and then – her head settles gently against Helena’s own. Helena’s breathing hitches in her chest, but otherwise she does not move. Sarah is finally touching her deliberately, with intent. It is better than anything Helena could have ever dreamed, better than any used-bandage scrap of memory she has hoarded of Sarah’s touches. This is better than _anything_.

She can feel the water of Sarah’s tears on her head. She lied, when she said the blood was a baptism: _this_ is a cleansing. Sarah’s skin burns the sin from Helena and her tears wash the sin from Helena. Helena is being reborn, right now, all of her burning and reemerging from the flames, the warmth of Sarah’s skin.

Helena is complete. Sarah is too, even if she does not know it yet. They are complete, the two of them! They are one again, blood of a sinner and blood of Sarah intermingling, Sarah’s chin pressed against Helena’s head (the delicate fluttering of her lips, as she sobs!), Helena’s arms wrapped against Sarah’s waist.

Yes. She wraps her arms around Sarah and knows this for a fact: she will never again let her sister go.

**Author's Note:**

> Why yes, these _are_ lyrics from "Let it Go."
> 
> My first thought upon seeing Helena running from the Prolethean compound in the trailer for this episode was "I'll rise like the break of dawn" -- which is fitting, since Helena is the light. But that's _cheery_ , so why not splinter it the way I've tried to splinter Helena's (admittedly already splintered) thought processes in this fic, smash it, remake it?
> 
> I also liked the idea of a "bloody dawn," since that's a meataphor people use and Helena, when she rises, rises covered in blood. Rising in this case being returning to Sarah.
> 
> So. Yeah. I probably overthought this title but I honestly do not care.
> 
> As always: please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! Thanks!


End file.
